maps

Today we're having a peek at the newly revealed and newly-public "most accurate" high resolution terrain map of Antarctica. This is REMA, or the Reference Elevation Model of Antarctica. Straight from the folks at Ohio State University, this map is made by what its creators say is "applying fully automated, stereo auto-correlation techniques to overlapping pairs of high-resolution optical satellite images."

Google Maps is one of those conveniences of modern life that many can't imagine life without. But more than just helping us not get lost, Maps also has one other somewhat controversial feature: location sharing. Now more than just knowing where your friends and family are, you will also be able to see how much battery they have left. You know, in case you need to swoop in to their rescue with a power bank.

Google Maps is the navigation app of choice for many people, but it's not always the easiest to navigate. Given that Maps is used for driving, you need to be able to access your primary destinations quickly, and that's where quick access buttons come in. These buttons are overlaid directly onto the home screen and pull up directions with a single tap.

A new collaboration between digital map-makers, the OneMap Alliance, has set itself the challenge of developing a global HD map for autonomous cars by 2020. The project - which is also inviting other companies to get involved - hopes to offer automakers and other companies developing driverless vehicles a single, consistent HD map across different regions.

Free movie tickets, just in time for Avengers: Infinity War, just what the doctor ordered. That's what Google made real this week via Google Maps Local Guides. "Just in time for some of the season's biggest movies," said Google, "we've teamed up with Atom to get you a free movie ticket. Use the app to redeem your perk by June 3, 2018."

Google Maps APIs Gaming was just announced for game developers around the world. With these keys to Google Maps, developers have access to the most vital component of the most successful mobile game in history: Pokemon GO. Before now, the only games that really, truly took hold of an entire planet of GPS-mapped coordinates were Niantic's own. Now, Google's opened their doors to the future of mobile gaming.

Google Maps and Waze, both owned by Google, have changed the way many of us travel. Their usefulness, however, has so far been best experienced by those walking or driving themselves. Commuters, sadly, aren’t as lucky. That will change soon, according to TechCrunch,with an update that will make Maps a bit more commuter-friendly, with bus stop notifications and even notifications on your lock screens.

It’s almost hard to imagine these days how we’ve managed to survive the past decades without Google Maps and related services like Waze. But despite their convenience, finding the right spot when and where you need still isn’t as easy or as fast as we may want it. Pending direct Internet-to-brain interface, Google is initiating some changes in Google Maps to cut down on the time your eyes spend scanning the screen for relevant markers. And it does so by lowering the information density as well as color coding markers.

The newest version of Google Maps Street View will have a much more complete view of this planet. Or at least the parts the company's driven to or hiked to or swam through so far. Street View panoramas, specifically, are all about to look a whole lot better for everyone - and that's not even the best part. The best part is - nobody has to go back out and take all of those photos again. Google's fixing everything with computer algorithms!

While we’re probably still dozens of years away from actually getting lost in our travels between planets in our neighborhood, that doesn’t mean we can’t start pretending already. Google Maps was originally created as a way to navigate our own terra firm but has long expanded to ocean depths, volcanoes, and, now, outer space. Google has just added not a few round objects from our solar system, both planets, moons, and one former planet, so you can live out your space-faring fantasies while companies scamper to make that a thing.

This week the folks at Apple have revealed their next big mapping adventure with Indoor Maps of malls. This update will be for Apple Maps and will have maps of a bunch of malls right off the bat. The first round of mall maps will arrive in Boston, Chicago, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Jose, Tokyo, and Washington, DC. This next update will also be launched with indoor maps of Airports.

Absolutely yes, your smartphone can be tracked - the question we should be asking is: what can we do about it? Today we're going to run down several easy ways in which we can see our phone being tracked, first of all. Then we're going to shut down this tracking in a few easy steps. It's really not too big of a hassle, just a trade-off - location tracking lets us map where we're going, but in exchange, our phone has to know where we are.